Trump’s not on the ballot, but his handpicked Senate candidates are, and whether they win or lose today may determine whether the GOP nominates Trump again in 2024.
Regardless of how, exactly, they turn out, the 2022 election results won’t effect any substantive change in public policy. However, they will have a dramatic impact on the 2024 Republican presidential nomination fight and, for the reason, are worth watching.
Legislatively, nothing will change because Democrat Joe Biden will still be president and the Republicans will win control of at least the House of Representatives. This will result in legislative gridlock.
Consequently, there will be no major legislation enacted into law for at least the next two to three years. But whether the Republicans win control of the Senate matters big-time for judicial nominations.
More importantly (because there likely will be no Supreme Court vacancies in the next two years), the fate of Trump’s handpicked Senate candidates will affect Trump’s standing within the GOP, and whether the Republican Party adopts a more non-interventionist or isolationist foreign policy. Ditto Trump-backed gubernatorial candidates.
Trump, of course, intervened in the 2022 GOP primary races by endorsing specific candidates, who often won the party’s nomination because they had Trump’s backing.
If these candidates win on election day, it will strengthen Trump’s claim that the Republican Party should nominate him again for president in 2024. (Trump has basically said he will announce next Tuesday that he is running again for president.)
If, however, at least a couple of Trump’s handpicked candidates lose on election day, it rightly will be seen as a repudiation of Trump and a blow to his image as a political winner. The GOP then will be less likely to nominate him for president in 2024.
The Preferred Scenario. For this reason, I am hoping that the Republicans win control of the Senate, even as their most Trumpian Senate and gubernatorial candidates go down to defeat. Because if that happens, it is much less likely that the Republican Party will nominate Trump again for president.
Granted, this is unlikely to happen. If the Republicans win control of the Senate, then Trump’s toady candidates almost certainly will win their respective races. However, my preferred scenario is possible.
If, for instance, non-Trumpy conservative GOP Senate candidates in Colorado and Washington State win, then the GOP could suffer losses in Georgia, Arizona, and Ohio, and still win control of the Senate.
Here, then, specifically, are the races I am watching:
Georgia. The Republican Party Senate nominee, Herschel Walker, is frighteningly unfit for political office and should not have been nominated.
Walker won the nomination only because Trump endorsed him and because he is the greatest college football running back (a Heisman Trophy winner) ever produced by the state of Georgia. If Walker loses (unlikely), then it rightly will be seen as a repudiation of Trump.
Unfortunately, Walker is running in the red-purple state of Georgia against a likable but extreme leftist, Raphael Warnock—which means Walker probably will win.
Ohio. JD Vance emerged as the winner from a crowded field of GOP Senate hopefuls only after Trump endorsed him. He is a weak and uninspiring candidate, but an intellectual leader of the Trump wing of the Republican Party.
Vance also is infamous for loudly and proudly declaring that he doesn’t care if Russia conquers Ukraine. His defeat, therefore, would go a long way toward saving the GOP from its growing non-interventionist or isolationist wing.
Unfortunately, Vance is running in solidly red Ohio, which means he almost certainly will win Tuesday.
Arizona. Blake Masters is a weak and unattractive candidate who also bends the knee to Trump. Masters is in a very tight race with incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Kelly.
Most analysts agree: if the Republicans had nominated two-term Governor Doug Ducey, then this race long ago would have been called safely for the GOP. But Ducey declined to run, because he knew Trump would vociferously oppose him after he refused to participate in Trump’s fraudulent 2020 “stop the steal” election scheme.
Consequently, the Republicans turned to Masters, whose off-putting persona and servility to Trump has made him politically unappealing to many Arizona voters. This race is a tossup.
Pennsylvania. Trump endorsed the weaker of the two GOP Senate candidates, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a heart surgeon. Trump emphatically rejected the stronger, Reaganesque candidate, David McCormick, because, Trump said, McCormick wasn’t really MAGA.
For most of the race, Oz has been trailing ultra-leftist John Fetterman, the incumbent Lieutenant Governor. But Fetterman’s disastrous debate performance showcased his obvious cognitive impairment suffered as a result of a stroke May 13, 2022.
Oz has since taken a slight lead in the race and is now expected to win. And although Trump endorsed him, Oz is hardly a Trump toady.
Instead, Oz enjoys a well-deserved reputation as an independent-minded thinker who will put Pennsylvanians, not Trump, first.
Colorado. Trump angrily denounced Colorado Senate nominee Joe O’Dea after O’Dea mildly said he would prefer that the GOP nominate someone else other than Trump for president in 2024.
O’Dea is a superb candidate, but a long shot in this purple-blue state. However, if he pulls off an upset, it will be an indication that Trump’s hold on the GOP may be less firm than many think.
Washington State. Tiffany Smiley is another superb candidate and even more of a long shot than O’Dea, because Washington State is even more Democratic than Colorado.
Her story, though, is moving, inspiring, and compelling. Smiley is a 41-year-old nurse with three young boys. Her husband, Scotty, is an Army veteran who was blinded and temporarily paralyzed in 2005 by a suicide bomber in Iraq.
Smiley fought and advocated for her husband to ensure that he got the medical care he needed and had earned.
As a result, notes the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, Scotty “became the first blind active-duty officer in military history. After many years, he officially medically retired from the military in 2015.”
Trump has been a non-factor in this race, and Smiley is clearly not a Trump Republican. Instead, she is the type of Republican—positive, forward-looking, and solutions-oriented—that the party needs more of on the national scene and in elected office.
Her opponent, incumbent Democratic Senator Patty Murray, is an aging political fossil and arguably the dumbest and least influential member of Congress.
Arizona Governor’s Race. Republican nominee Kari Lake is a superb politician, but also a total Trump toady. That, however, is not what most concerns us.
More worrisome is Lake’s newfound political alliance with former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), her denunciation of “warmongers,” and apparent embrace of a non-interventionist or isolationist foreign policy that retreats from the world even as America’s enemies advance and move forward in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
The danger is that if Lake wins the Arizona governor’s race, she’ll be well-positioned to run for vice president or president in 2028 or 2032. Her political skills are unique and compelling and Lake would be a formidable candidate. Better to stop her now before it’s too late.
The polls say Lake will win Tuesday, but the race is considered close. So an upset is not beyond question.
The bottom line: The 2022 election results matter because of what they portend for the 2024 presidential race, not because of what they will mean legislatively.
Truth be told, we are in for two to three years of legislative gridlock, as a Democratic president and a Republican House of Representatives check each other legislatively.
But if Trump’s handpicked Republican Senate candidates in Georgia, Ohio, and Arizona all lose, then the former defeated president will be a diminished political figure with a much-reduced political standing.
It then will be easier for a strong Republican presidential candidate—Florida Governor Ron DeSantis most likely—to knock off Trump and return the GOP to its winning ways.
A GOP Senate. Defeating Trump’s handpicked Senate candidates also would deal a crippling blow to the non-interventionist or isolationist wing of the Republican Party. And the GOP can still win the Senate if its non-Trumpy conservative Senate candidates in Colorado and Washington State pull off upset wins.
GOP control of the Senate matters because it will help to stop or at least slow down Biden’s disastrous judicial nominees.
For these reasons, let’s hope and pray that my preferred scenario—a Republican-controlled Senate without Herschel Walker, JD Vance, and Blake Masters—materializes on election day.
Feature photo credit: Trump’s handpicked candidates Herschel Walker (Georgia), JD Vance (Ohio), and Blake Masters (Arizona), courtesy of CBS News, Scripps Media, Inc., and AZ Central, respectively.